Declarations Of Cardinal Marc Ouellet -
The Catholic Church Called To Do Her Examination Of Conscience

Here, kitty, kitty! Nice little Atheist kitty!

Note: The Atheist cat litter, commonly known as the
Le Devoir newspaper, published on 2007-November-28
[Source]
another attack against the recent declarations of Cardinal Marc Ouellet
on
religion in
school.
This time, the little kitten is Ms. Marie-Michelle Poisson, Philosophy
teacher at Ahuntsic College and Vice-Priestess of the Quebecois Secular Movement
[Mouvement
laïque québécois].
I add the
colors
and the sloppy English translation.

Morality and religion are two completely different and independant
things

[Red] Because he's convinced that any other moral teaching (for example, teaching
Ethics that are rational, humanistic and philosophically-based) could
only lead our beautiful young ones to damnation, depravation, even suicide!

[Red] That's essentially the message he recently gave to the Bouchard-Taylor
Commission.

If we look at the facts, rather than the hairball on Ms. Poisson's tongue,
the
Cardinal requests:
"that in the name of everybody's religious freedom, the State course
on Ethics and religious culture be OPTIONAL" If the Cardinal had been
convinced that this Course would lead to everybody's "damnation", he
would have demanded its total elimination. The Cardinal
also asserts:
"I insist that the Bishops are not opposed to the development of this State
course".

As far as I know, as we speak, only one person in Quebec demands the total
elimination of this Course, for both Catholics and non-Catholics.
It's me.

[Yellow] But Monsignor Ouellet was correctly reminded, by quite a few social
stakeholders, that
[Red] the Church [End Red]
wasn't always, and still isn't a role model for the most elementary respect
for human rights and that some crimes committed in the name of dogmas of
the Catholic faith are simply unforgivable.

If on TV they showed a bloodthirsty terrorist who claimed to be a Buddhist
or a Muslim, Ms. Poisson would explain the next day, to all her young
philosophy students, that there's a difference between a religion's official
teachings, and the behaviors of a person claiming to be a member of this
religion.

Why then make an exception for the Catholic Church? The
Church has always taught that Popes, Bishops and Priests could go to Hell
just like you and me. Moreover, the Church is so aware that Her members
are sinners, that She has a special Sacrament for Catholics who behave in
an immoral way! (Confession. By the way, to receive absolution, you must
repent for your sins, promise to never start over, and compensate for the
harm you've done.)

Anybody can commit any crime, in the name of any belief of any religion.
And what does this prove? Nothing. To accuse the Catholic Church, you have
to show that such a crime is caused by such a dogma of Faith. I
therefore throw down a challenge to Ms. Poisson:

I'llgive you 1000$
if you show me one crime (whether it's committed by a Pope, or a Bishop,
or a Priest) which isn't explicitly condemned by the Catholic Church's
officialteachings.
Or again, find me an official teaching of the Catholic
Church that encourages some vice or crime.

[Yellow] Before such a paradox, how can Marc Ouellet justify upholding moral and
Catholic teaching in school, otherwise than by trying to hurriedly
compose, using many sophisms and non-truths, a facade for the Roman Catholic
Church which is respectful of the person?

Of course, if the official teachings of the Church are bad, you're right.
But if that's the case,
take up my challenge.

[Red] Didn't the Church have an immoral behavior toward natives, women, homosexuals
and lesbians, orphans and children born out of wedlock, divorced persons,
unmarried mothers, and victims of pedophile priests?

[Green] In his strange letter, Mr. Ouellet recognizes it unequivocally by
asking "forgiveness for all this evil!". Has the Church rectified her
positions toward these persons? No, and she doesn't seem disposed to
do it. Therefore, the Cathlic Church is ill-positioned to give morality
lessons to anyone.

Here, I must defend Ms. Poisson. This letter by the Cardinal oozes a
scandalous ambiguity,
and the Cardinal caused a lot of harm by trying, once again, to placate
Christ and Satan at the same time. If the teachings of the Church are
bad, since the Church has no intention of changing them, then any
attempt to "ask forgiveness for this evil" is cruelly hypocritical and
dishonest.

Except the official teachings of the Catholic Church are holy and
infallible. If you don't agree,
take up my challenge.

Religion doesn't equal morality

[Yellow] It has therefore been proved that religion is never a guarantee of
morality. And what has just been said of
[Red] the Catholic religion [End Red]
could be said for all religions.

Wow! Proofs run really fast, when they aren't dragged down by the
heavy luggage of facts and logic!

More seriously, you haven't proved anything concerning the Catholic
religion. Otherwise,
take up my challenge.
Moreover, even the Bible clearly says that the Christian religion
isn't a guarantee of morality. According to the Bible, the most hateful
and bloodthirsty creatures in the universe (demons) have faith!
[Jc 2:19]

[Green] Obedience to some religious precepts or the perpetuation of ancestral
traditions having a sacred dimension are often in conflict with the most
elementary moral duties.

[Yellow] Morality
and religion are two completely different and independant things.
If [Red] sometimes [End Red] they coincide,
it's simply because everywhere there are honest and courageous persons,
believers or agnostics, who place above all respect for human rights,
and who prove it in their daily actions. It's this humanistic
universal morality transcending
[Red] all [End Red]
religions which we must now teach to all our children with no exceptions
in Quebec's primary and secondary schools.

Here, Ms. Poisson is quite near the truth.

Imagine you're a sociologist, and that you're scientifically studying
religions. The subject of your Ph.D. thesis is: "The Coincidence or
Non-Coincidence of religions with the universal humanistic morality".
How are you going to approach this topic?

Second, you will, for each religion, extract the subset of its moral
teachings. Let's take a silly example: the "Gaar-Teqs" religion. If the
"sacred" scriptures of the Gaar-Teqs say we have to prostrate ourselves
five times a day in the direction of the
MEC,
that's a liturgical teaching, which doesn't concern us here. But if the
Gaar-Teqs religion says we mustn't dump trash on forest trails, then
that's a moral teaching. In this case, it's even a good
teaching, which in fact coincides with the "universal humanistic morality".

Third, you have to compare point by point each precept of the "universal
humanistic morality", with each corresponding precept of each religion's
subset of moral teachings. (Ouch! A truly monastic task!)

If you do your scientific work correctly, you'll be able to observe
serveral things:

(3) The Catholic religion recognizes the existence of a
"universal humanistic morality" (i.e.
Natural Law,
knowable by all
men,
even those who don't have Faith). Moreover, it integrates this whole morality
into its official teachings.

(4) Not only does the Catholic religion integrate all of this natural
morality, but on top of that only it explains the
serious inherent shortcomings
of natural morality, and then heals them.

[Yellow] It's more than time to operate in minds a radical and salutary divorce
between ethics and religion,

Scientifically, we can't put in the same basket of "THE" religion,
religions who teach radically immoral precepts, and Catholicism which
integrally teaches natural morality, and better.

[Yellow] just as it was once and for all necessary to separate science and religion.

It depends what religion you're talking about.

[Green] To succeed, we'll first have to define and refute all the extremely
accommodating prejudices that automatically grant a faultless moral
uprightness to religious persons.

And old failing curricula

[Green] In this program, each discussed theme had to be illustrated by numerous
references to religious texts. For example, "relations with others" or
"relationship to consumption" could be illustrated with stories taken
from the Old and the New Testament, life stories of yesterday's and today's
Catholics, a few Catholic rites and a few stories of religious diversity.

[Yellow] But never, as examples, were proposed the significant and even
decisive contributions of philosophers.

First, you'd need to say exactly which course you're talking about.
It's quite possible that you've read a bad pseudo-catechesis course. I
myself lost Faith when I was about 12 because of such a course. But
the official teachings of the Catholic Church certainly don't look
down on the important role of Philosophy, and many canonized saints were
philosophers (Saint Justin Martyr, Saint Albert the Great, Saint Thomas
Aquinas, etc.)

[Green] Thus, the example of "Martin Luther King, a man of faith and promoter
of a change of mentality concerning the relations between Whites and
Blacks" was proposed.

[Yellow] But it is of public notoriety that the political committment of
Martin Luther King was first and foremost inspired by Henry D. Thoreau,
American philosopher, theorist of civil disobedience and non-violence,
concepts which were determinant in the success of the anti-segregationist
fight in the United States.

Ouch! Quite an assertion! Even though I'm a US citizen, it has been a long
time since I've read some works of Martin Luther King. As far as I know,
he himself would never have dared assert that his action was based on
anything other than our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Rock of Ages!

[Yellow] It goes without saying that it was totally excluded to mention the cases
where, on the contrary,
[Red] the Catholic Church [End Red]
would have been racist (for example, the Valladolid controversy, at the
origin of Black slavery in the Americas) or would have demonstrated a
excessive taste for wealth and luxury (for example, the guided tour of
the Roman palaces, whose wealth comes from the fruits of one form or another
of slavery).

Who is being accused? The official teachings of the Catholic Church, or
the despicable sins of some members of the Clergy?
Take up my challenge.

A self-sufficent Ethic

[Green] Ethics is a philosophical discipline which studies and validates the
principles involves when we formulate moral judgments, rational
principles which are able to orient and limit human actions.

[Yellow] Ethics, just like the natural sciences in the XVIII century, had to
conquer her independance from religion.

Please define the word "religion".

[Yellow] From now on, Ethics is
[Red] self-sufficient [End Red]
and able to propose universal operational principles, for example
human rights, the basis of our modern democratic institutions.

Please define "self-sufficient". You could be right, since
natural morality
isn't based on some belief. But I think you're rather claiming that Good
and Evil can exist, even if
God is dead.

[Yellow] The rational efforts of thinkers such as Rousseau, Kant, Tocqueville or
Thoreau, among others, have contributed to establish a corpus of
knowledge which can and must be taught in our schools so that our
youngsters will be educated about their rights and duties as citizens.

[Green] And it's for this reason that UNESCO has made of philosophy a priority
for all levels of schooling. We can find in the Paris Declaration a
most relevant rationale for teaching this discipline: "[...] Philosophical
education, by forming free and thoughtful minds, able to resist the various
forms of propaganda, fanaticism, exclusion and intolerance, contributes to
peace and prepares everybody for their responsibilities concerning the
great contemporary interrogations, among others in the field of Ethics."

I too am absolutely in favor of good Philosophy!

Ethics drowned in religious culture

[Green] Unfortunately, no moral curricula produced so far by Quebec's Department of
Education has a significant and relevant content in philosophical Ethics.
The new ethics and religious culture course, whose implementation is
planned for December 2008 is no exception.

Thank you Ms. Poisson! Finally, we perfectly agree on something!

[Green] The contents of philosophical Ethics, discussed briefly, are drowned in
the contents of religious culture.

I find you too kind toward that Course. Its "content of philosophical Ethics"
is
rotten to the core.

[Green] The teacher must present the
[Yellow] humanistic [End Yellow] Ethics content,
which nevertheless constitutes the essence of the civic principles which
guide our modern societies, with the same qualification as the normative
religious contents, without ever giving systematic and explicit priority to
philosophical Ethics when human rights and religious practices don't
correspond.

[Green] It seems that the program is designed in such a way that all normative
divergences are dealt with as "cultural diversities" which must be
the object of a mutual tolerance implemented by the exercise of listening
and dialogue. Once again, we're swimming in downright relativism, a
relativism which is able to reinforce the moral prejudices of religious
persons, a sirupy relativism which we hoped, wrongly, might
preserve us from the political sensitivities of certain interest groups
which have been and continue to be very aggressive on the issue of
religious moral teaching in school.

Here also, I think we could agree (but we'd need to better define the
word "humanistic").

Misleading religious culture

[Green] It's clear that Catholic parents won't be content with what appears to
their eyes as a deception consisting in maintaining a certain religious
content in school by naming it and defining it otherwise.

I hope you're right, and that Catholic parents will fight to defend their
rights and the rights of the Church.

[Yellow] The expression "religious culture" is misleading for other reasons.
It has among other effects of overdetermining the religious factor
among the set of significant factors which enable a comprehension of
today's real Quebec; religion, whatever people say, plays a minor role
as the mark of identity and is certainly not the ultimate guide of
the behavior of Quebecers who, in case of a disagreement, certainly
prefer to refer to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms rather than to
God.

I basically agree. The people of Quebec have, by and large, apostasized.
True Catholicism has almost been wiped out.

[Green] The debate Cardinal Marc Ouellet wants to drag us into is extremely
annoying and embarrassing.

[Green] The only way to cut off this sterile debate which only keeps alive the
vain hopes of religious militants is to remove with no further ado the
"religious culture" contents of the new programs, while beefing up
and making more coherent the contents of philosophical Ethics and
the skills related to "the practice of dialogue in the perspective of
the living-together".

I agree with you that even from a purely philosophical point of view,
this course sucks.

[Yellow] It would be extremely unfortunate if, because of the systematic and
organized obstruction of a group of bitter militants opposed to only
a part of the new program of Ethics and religious culture, we'd have
to give up all of the contents of a program which is innovative and
without a doubt valuable for everybody.

I'd agree with the assertion that natural morality is good, necessary,
and "without a doubt valuable for everybody", but that's precisely not
what
this course
offers.